JESUS WITHIN JUDAISM
New Light from Exciting Archaeological Discoveries
James H. Charlesworth
New York: Doubleday/Anchor Bible Reference Library, 1988
288 pp., $20.00
The quest for the historical Jesus, nearly abandoned in the early part of this century, is being revived by New Testament scholars in the eighties, thanks to a wealth of new archeological discoveries. Discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi Codices, and a profusion of new pseudepigraphic texts, many of which were written or circulated among Palestinian Jews during the lifetime of Jesus of Nazareth, has spurred what may be a paradigm shift in biblical scholarship.
For generations, seminarians have been taught to be skeptical of any claims about the historical Jesus. Form critics have analyzed the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels and have determined that the great majority of them were creations of the early Christians' faith in the resurrected Jesus, rather than accurate recollections of the earthy Jesus. The gospel writers, moreover, were not eyewitnesses to the events of Jesus' life--Mark, the earliest gospel, was written after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in A.D. 70, forty years after Jesus had been crucified. They used older sources and edited them to construct theological documents that expressed the kerygma, or proclamation, of the church. This proclamation, was based upon the salvific meaning found in the events surrounding Jesus' death and resurrection: Though crucified under Pontius Pilate, Jesus overcame death and was raised up as Lord and Christ, thereby offering salvation to all who believe. The gospel writers' proclamation of this kerygma was thought to have eclipsed any concern with factual details of the life of Jesus prior to Easter. The great New Testament historian and theologian Rudolf Bultmann gave this highly influential judgement:
I do indeed think that we can now know almost nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus, since the early Christian sources show no interest in either, are moreover fragmentary and often legendary; and other sources about Jesus do not exist.
One feature of this attitude among biblical scholars is a skepticism about most of the red-letter passages in the Bible. To the scandal of conservative Christians, biblical scholars have narrowed the list of "genuine" words of Jesus, his ipsissima verba, to about thirty passages. Those interested in such a list may consult Norman Perrin's popular Introduction to the New Testament Absent are many of Jesus' parables, his polemics against the Pharisees, and all predictions of his death and resurrection and the coming of the Son of Man. Usually the testimony in the Gospel of John is totally discounted as nonhistorical. Methodologically, the most important basis used to make this judgement is the criterion of dissimilarity. A passage cannot be reliably attributed to Jesus if it can be shown to stem from the beliefs of the early church, or if it can be shown to be one with the beliefs of Jesus' Jewish contemporaries. Only after these two sources of contamination can be ruled out can a passage be deemed to be an authentic word from Jesus' mouth.
Once this critical weeding of the Gospels has been done, there is little left that can be
...
Read Full Article
|
